


Chasing Darkness

by WayWorseThanScottish



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Episode: s01e01 A Study in Pink, IN SPACE!, M/M, Shy Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-21
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-12-04 22:51:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11565006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WayWorseThanScottish/pseuds/WayWorseThanScottish
Summary: John, an invalidated Terran Corps medic, is looking for a job back on Earth after suffering an injury on the front lines. Mike Stamford knows just the sort of job that would suit.This is essentially A Study in Pink except in space, which therefore makes everything cooler and gives me an excuse to make ridiculous plant puns sometimes.





	Chasing Darkness

**Author's Note:**

> Listen, this was going to be a cohesive story and then i decided "fuck it" and I had fun. Sorry for the blatantly purple prose and weird descriptions. I had a blast. Also I briefly looked up some symptoms of head trauma and cherry picked some of them then proceeded to forget some of the ones I put in the story. Once again, not as cohesive as it could be. Oh well.

June 3720--London, Sol 3

It hadn’t even been that long since he’d been in the space war, and yet he missed the dark sky terribly. It was the kind of missing that had no name, the same depth as say, betrayal, but not as tragic-sounding as longing. A phantom limb, maybe, or when you dream about a really great breakfast then wake up in the morning to realize that you don’t have the ingredients. 

The frigid white walls of the hospital hadn’t done anything to ease his mind or let him forget for a moment that he’d never have the opportunity to be out there in the skies ever again. He’d fallen in love with the skies, he felt more at home there than anywhere else. The stars were as familiar to him as that song that used to play all the time in your childhood. 

John Watson had been given the chance of a lifetime: fighting for the Terran Corps against the Klons from Jethrin, who had begun invading neutral territory in the Persephone and Ophreides regions. The Klons were definitely a fearsome foe, if not in person. The plant people didn’t really… move. It was mostly their subservient species that moved and operated ships for them, but for plants they were rather invasive. 

John had been working as an army medic who would go from spaceship to spaceship and try and rescue and recover anyone alive, and it was general knowledge that anyone in a red spaceship was medical and therefore not to be shot at. And yet, it was just his luck that while he was docking his spaceship onto another that had seen better days that the entire area was ripped apart by a blaster. He had had few precious seconds to get on a lifesuit, but his first priority had been to get a lifesuit onto his patient. As a result, of course, he was delayed in his own suit, and had suffered a mild brain injury due to lack of air. His suit’s air supply just hadn’t kicked in in time. The PTSD hand tremor also wasn’t great.

So it was here he found himself, at the fourth medical center that day. The first two had been for himself, to check up on his brain injury, but the next two were to see if he could find some sort of job. His brain injury had caused a few minor symptoms, but certainly enough to stop the Earth Corps from letting him continue. 

Supposedly it was possible for him to rejoin the Terran Corps, but it was such a selective program, what with the trillion or so pool of people to choose from, that he doubted they’d want an invalidated medic. Plus with his current conditions, he wasn’t quite sure if he even wanted to get to next year.

So yeah, here he was, in St. Bart’s medical office, with his frankly stunning resume and no job prospects. The whole loss of memory and lack of concentration, along with the weirder symptoms like the loss of smell and sound sensitivity really blocked him off from, well, working with people. And people were kind of critical to the whole doctor schtick. 

Luckily the receptionist here was pretty, at least.

“John Watson?” the receptionist called from the front. He nodded to her and got up slowly, trying to keep his center of gravity from freaking out too much. He was dizzy enough as is, what with getting used to gravity again and the brain injury.

But just as he was getting to the desk, he was interrupted by a rather rotund man who had been walking down the hall.

“John Watson?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s me, mate. Mike Stamford! We went to school together, remember?”

In fact, he did quite look like the Mike from years back. “Oh! Mike. Yeah, it’s been long, eh?”

Mike gave a self-deprecating smile. “Yeah, I know, I got fat. Weren’t you off in the Terran Corps trying not to get shot at? What happened?”

“... well, I suppose my ship got shot.” At that, Mike’s face fell into an uncomfortable grimace, not entirely unlike someone who’s face had cramped after smiling for family photos with the unfortunately incontinent family dog.

“Ah. Well. London treating you well, at least?”

“Mostly looking for a job; the Terran Corps doesn’t supply much in terms of housing. That’s why I’m here, actually. I have some brain trauma so I can’t be in bright light for too long, and I figured this was the best place to go.”

Mike’s ever-expressive face stilled for a moment. “Well, I might actually be able to help you there.”

John looked down and put his hands in his pockets. “What? Who’d want an irritable ex-Terran Corps medic,” he paused with a small smile, “with no sense of smell and light sensitivity for an employee?”

“No really, John, I might have something. Come, let’s grab coffee and I’ll tell you about it. I’m sure this bright white end of the hospital is doing wonders for your head right now.”

The reception interrupted. “Sir? Our dean of medicine is waiting.”

John looked at her, reading her name tag and giving her a charming smile. “I’m sorry Mary, I’ll have to raincheck the interview. But here’s my contact chip, in case the dean, or anybody I suppose, wants to get in touch.” He looked concerned. “Once again, I’m terribly sorry. This must be a bother for you, I could try and make it up to you later, at dinner, if you’d like.”

Mary smirked at him. “Alright hot shot, maybe.”

With that, they left. 

“You dog, John. I’d almost forgotten your days in uni,” Mike shook his head. “You always were surrounded by the birds.”

What felt like minutes later, but was in all likelihood over an hour, Mike and John were at the other end of the hospital district, coffee in hand. 

“So have you told me about this job?” John asked. He was sure they’d been talking about it. What else would they have been talking about? Surely they had been talking about it. 

Mike laughed. “Oh, you’ll do fine. You’re a shoe-in. Plus, all your symptoms will fade in the next year or so anyway.”

John frowned. “Right. Okay, but what was the job about?”

“Oh, you’ll see.” With a wink that seemed too devilish for someone so, well, kind-hearted and open, he opened the doors to one of the labs next to them.

Inside was blissfully dim. John looked over to Mike, who was grimacing again in that beside-an-incontinent-family-dog kind of way again. 

“Ah, Mike, I called for you earlier, where’s the pen?” A man said, sitting at the lab table in front of a metal box. His skin was deathly pale, and he was oddly skinny. He looked half like a corpse, half like someone had just decided to carve out the important fleshy bits of him with a spoon. He was almost grotesquely beautiful, the way that an organized display of the innards of a body could be. “Ah, I see you’ve brought me an assistant.”

“John.” John said, in his most John-ish way.

“Yes, hello John. Mild brain trauma? Perfect. And you won’t even remember if I’m less than cordial to you. Absolutely ideal.” The man clasped his hands together. “And no sense of smell! Why, it’s Christmas! Mike, leave. Importance is about to be achieved.” He spun around from his lab table. “So John, Persephone or Ophreides?” What a stunning deep voice.

“Persephone… but how did you…?” John turned to Mike. “Did you tell him?”

Mike shrugged and said, “Nah, he’s just like that. Have fun. Maybe you two can live together too, and you’ll be a perfect Marie and Pierre Curie.” With a sigh and a fond nod, he left the room, clasping John’s shoulder on the way out.

John looked at the door, thinking briefly of his bedsit and the fact he could be in absolute silence and darkness and horizontal. What a blessing that would be. 

“So John, I suppose Mike’s told you all about my work, but you probably didn’t quite get it all. In fact, Mike barely knows anything, but everyone’s an idiot so that’s not news.” The man said, still inspecting whatever was in the metal box. He looked over to John with cold grey eyes, and blushed maybe, but it was hard to tell in the dim lighting.

Well this could be interesting. John gave one of his heart-stoppingly charming smiles. “Uh, right. Sorry, who are you? And how did you know about the sense of smell?”

“Well, there’s fermenting Klon corpses in those bins right by you, which are rather putrid to the average nose. But what I’m more interested in is your medical knowledge of the Klon people, and, of course your experience in spaceships.” The man eyed him surreptitiously, and John straightened up and couldn’t help but puff his chest out a bit.

He nodded. “Course, yeah, but who are you? I’d quite like to get you know you better. And what experiment is even happening?” The man moved closer to John, and from up close John could see that the man was, well, actually quite breathtakingly handsome.

“Sherlock Holmes, native to London, entirely human according to my mother, an alien according to essentially everyone else.” he said this carelessly, as though he’d repeated it a thousand times. “I consider myself more of a freak of nature than anything else. The experiment is, obviously, on the Klon and how they fare in space, I’m aware that microbodies have an alarming growth rate in space but I’m unsure how that applies to the Klon. And you, my dear Boswell, will be documenting this experiment as well as overseeing certain simple portions. We will always be working in dim lighting, as the Klon have a remarkable ability to grow in synthetic light, and we will be working in an isolated pod orbiting Sol 3 for approximately eight months. Does that cover it for you or would you like it written down?”

John looked Sherlock up and down, and raised his eyebrows. “Well, I think you look fine.”

Sherlock stared at him, blinking. After a moment, he cleared his throat. “John. Here’s a write-up of what we’ll be doing for the next eight months. Please make an effort to keep this on you. Our ship leaves in two days from the Baker Street docking bay, you’ll need security clearance but I have the means to expedite that.”

John smiled charmingly, and Sherlock’s stoic face wavered. “Alright, but we still don’t really know each other. If we’re going to be living together for eight months, I think we should at least have dinner.”

“I know you’re a Terran Corps medic and you’ve been invalided home from the war in the Persephone region. You suffer from some mild brain trauma, not enough to stop you from working, but enough for you to be consistently annoyed at your limitations. You’re accustomed to space travel, obviously, and you thrive there. You have higher than average bone density and you have a brother that you’re not close to. Possibly because of some event when you were younger, but you feel a sense of obligation to keep in touch with him, despite not taking him up on his offer of living with him. And I know your therapist thinks your depression a side effect of the brain trauma, which potentially it is, but more likely is due to circumstances and your lack of future. I won’t even get into the persistent hand tremor. That’s enough to be going on, don’t you think?”

He spoke rather quickly, but John kept up well enough. “That was amazing.”

“Oh. Yes, well,” Sherlock smiled softly, and turned back in his seat. “That’s not what most people say.”

“And what do most people say?”

“Piss off.”

John giggled. “Well that’s hardly right. How’d you figure all of that out?”

Sherlock scanned him briefly. “Medic, since you’re in the hospital. Military based on your bearing and recently at war in space based on your clear discomfort with, well, gravity. Brain trauma explains why you’re not still in space, mild enough because you can talk and think albeit slowly, which is more than most of the population who can only do one at a time. Severe enough that your sense of smell is gone, along with your memory based off your conversation with Mike. Mild insomnia and irritability, but that might’ve been from PTSD or just your personality. And you’ve written on your arm with pen to contact someone named Harry. You’ve gone over it a couple times because it keeps washing off because you’re procrastinating it. Chances are that it’s a relative. Anything else?”

“Stunning.”

“Yes, it must be. To see someone’s brain actually work.”

“Well. That too, I suppose,” John grinned. “You’re a bit wrong, though.”

Sherlock’s small smile dropped. “So I’ve been told.”

“Ha, no, I mean I don’t have a brother. My sister’s name is Harry. Short for Harriet.” 

“Well, there’s always something.”

They shared a smile.

“Go on and start packing. Remember, Baker Street docking bay, two days.”

John nodded and handed him a contact chip, brushing their hands together. “Here, message me if you need me.” Sherlock took the chip and nodded brusquely, looking down.

“Well. I’ve got to prepare these samples.” He cleared his throat and looked back at the box of plant matter.

John knew when he was being excused. He left in a mild haze of excitement. Finally! Something was happening to him, he’d finally be able to put something of note on his blog, more than articles about Terran Corps initiatives.

On his transit home, he decided to get off a stop early to enjoy the walk. For there was finally something to enjoy, now that life seemed less dull. And it was early evening, so the outdoor light didn’t bother him and he could almost make out a star in the sky. Soon. Soon he’d get to venture off into the dark. 

A dark car began following him down the block. At first he thought it was coincidence that there was only a single vehicle on the road, and the new engines in cars were silent so it took a while for him to notice the shadow behind him.

“John Watson.” A woman said from behind him in a disinterested tone. “It would be in your best interest to get in the car.”

Well that was a threat if he’d ever heard one. He cursed himself for leaving his phaser in his bedside table.

The car left him at a warehouse, where a man stood with as much gravitas as a man could have considering he owned an antique umbrella. “Have a seat, John.”

John scoffed. “Oh, you bastard. You know, I’m pretty easy to reach. I’ve got a website and a contact chip and geo-tracking enabled, it’s really not hard to find me. That being said, why on earth did you want to reach me, Mycroft?”  
Mycroft raised an eyebrow on his otherwise passive face. “John. I know that our last encounter wasn’t… perhaps, a preferred one, but I must say the hostility is uncalled for.”

John rolled his eyes. “You could say that, I suppose. I prefer calling it a hostage situation with the Klon where you offered to use me as fertilizer but I suppose you could call it an unpreferable encounter.”

“Indeed.”

“Anyway, what do you want from me this time?”

“What is your connection to Sherlock Holmes?”

John pursed his lips. “You know, I don’t think that’s any of your business. You don’t get to ask my intentions after your… brother? After what you did you me, you should be well out of my life and my way, Mycroft.”

“Unfortunate as this all may be, I am an interested party, John. I wouldn’t be unwilling to compensate you, if you were to help me.”

John snorted. “Yeah, right. Piss off. I’m leaving.”

Mycroft sighed. “Once again, unfortunate.”

John shrugged and headed for the door. His contact chip pinged with a message, as he walked outside.

Change of plans. 221B Baker Street docking bay. Come at once if convenient. -SH  
If inconvenient, come anyway. -SH  
Bring your phaser. -SH

John laughed, and jogged to his bedsit and got his phaser, then took a cab to the docking bay. What was that bastard’s brother up to? He arrived at the docking bay in no time, only to find a sweet old lady greeting him at the gate.

“Oh, you must be John, dear, Sherlock’s told me all about you.” She said in the kindest, most grandmotherly voice.

“Er, yeah. I suppose so.” John scratched the back of his head awkwardly. “Um, I just met him, really--”

“And a soldier!” she interrupted. “Sherlock must be ever so pleased--”

“Mrs. Hudson! Stop pestering John!” Sherlock yelled from inside the bay, before making an entrance. He smiled shyly. “Hi John.” John waved at him.

“Now, there’s two spaceships available, you two.” she said, leading them through the bay. “Both up to spec for the lab equipment. Will you be needing one bedroom or two?” She winked at John.

Sherlock was the first to reply. “Two-”   
“One-”  
“One?” Sherlock frowned.  
“One.” John winked.  
“Uh. Yes. One.” Sherlock stammered out. His face was rather pleasantly flushed.

“Oh, you boys,” she said with a knowing grin. “I already have the samples in the one bedroom. Somehow I knew. You know, the docking pad next door, the one owned by Mrs. Turner, you know she has married ones!”

“Mm, yes, I’m sure she’s thrilled. Mrs. Hudson, go away. John and I need to prep the samples,” Sherlock said after clearing his throat.

“Uh, yeah, samples...” John trailed off, enjoying the flush on Sherlock’s throat.

As the ship door closed off Mrs. Hudson from them, John sighed happily at the sight of the inside of a spaceship. “Yeah, this’ll do quite nicely once the other shipping containers and documents are cleaned out from here.”

“Oh, uh, yeah I’ve already, um..” Sherlock started aimlessly stacking papers. “It’ll be clean enough, don’t worry.”

“Oh, uh,” John paused and cleared his throat a little awkwardly. “So your brother’s a bit of an arse, eh?” he said, switching the subject.

Sherlock rolled his eyes and flopped onto the padded grey bench. “You’ve met Mycroft, I take it?”

“Yeah, I’ve had the displeasure of having met him before too,” John grinned. “I must say, his brother’s an awful lot prettier than he is.”

Sherlock tried to hide his smile behind a frown. “How did you meet him?”

“Well, let’s just say it was a close call and I was almost made into fertilizer, and your brother was not on my side, in terms of diplomatic relations,” John replied, shaking his head.

“John.”

“Yeah. It was a bit of a mess.” He leaned against the wall and looked at Sherlock. “So… do you have a partner?”

“Well. You’re my work partner for the duration of this experiment.” Sherlock met his gaze evenly.

John licked his lips. “Yeah. I suppose. Wasn’t talking about that though.”

“Partners are… not really my area. I consider myself married to my work.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes.”

“Alright.”

“But since you’ll be an important part of my work…”

John grinned. “You’re a proper genius, aren’t you.” He took a step towards Sherlock, as Sherlock stood up. “Would you mind terribly, if I…”

And their lips met, and it was like fireworks and pure joy and their mouths tasted like mint and their tongues battled for dominance. And John could swear that Sherlock smelled like the sweetest thing in the world and like sandalwood and spices. At least, that was what John would later write in his blog, despite him clearly not having a sense of smell, as previously acknowledged. 

What actually happened was an embarrassing bump of noses which Sherlock tried to apologize for but his mouth was interrupted quite happily. It was one of those unremarkable kisses made all the more remarkable for the people involved.


End file.
